Argos aims to circulate writing about topical matters of public and political import that is local, critical and accessible. We believe critical intellectual conversation should be heard here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, not simply published for credit in international fora for more limited and specialised audiences. Of particular interest to us is writing that grounds its concern with the public or political good of place-making in theory or philosophy.

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think

by Argos as You as Argos

I The University is a site of distributed cognition. Or: a site for the distribution of cognition, a site for the monetised exchange of cognition between embodied nodes (whereas the site of the thinking of this exchange is ‘elsewhere’). The exchange may be between people (students and staff) or it may be between bank accounts (mine and theirs). In another sense, the exchange involves the educating present being given as a loan from the indebted...

...the fuck out of that? B We’re encouraged to leave school, collaborate, and work together as a part of this great team, but it’s not recognised by the institution as a way of learning. E From a broader point of view, if you think about society’s expectations of a successful individual, it’s about contributing to the economy. That’s how you become a contributing member of society: your work makes money, you’re successful and you have a career. A...

...he participants ignored the demands of the university administration's proxies the university administration’s proxies, and carved out a space for thought not subject to the ordinary constraints which the university places on thinking. The university, within the wider political context, is counted as something that produces a quantifiable product, made manifest in the symbolic register of the market, whether it is performance based research score...

...ot to fabricate a history book for ourselves, one that we would of course feature in heavily. Instead of attempting to concoct some narrative that picks a path through heady times, I want to have a critical look at what I now think we were doing then, if that makes any sense, and reevaluate whether there is anything that might be of strategic use to us now that the movement here has whizzed round the room making a farting noise before flopping on...

...ouble occupation, whereby Europeanisation, or more specifically, Anglosphericism, has had to accommodate itself to an already differently occupied place and its larger Oceanic setting. Such a pre-occupation cannot but make us think geotheoretically—and, in turn, think in terms of other centres and on other grounds than those of the northern axis of Europe or Anglo-America. In this spirit, we ask after the grounds of the university—and the gr...

...or personal and collective transformation and social renewal. Beyond the traditional critic-and-conscience role, its creative endeavour is ‘repurposeful’: it generates purposefulness by restoring old and imagining new ways of thinking and acting. Realising Our Principles 1. Automony If a knowledge economy is to signify something other than making the university in all respects for-profit by quantifying and commodifying knowledge work, perhaps...

...ocial justice and cultural revitalisation. We were emboldened in our task and the sense of ‘righting a wrong’ flowed through our activities. However, as time passed and as I moved deeper and deeper into mātauranga Māori, my thinking about this body of knowledge changed. More and more I began to think about this body of knowledge on its own merits, outside of our urgencies concerning the so-called decolonisation of Māori people. I can recall th...

1 The neoliberalised university embodies the destruction of the public sphere by capitalism. Spaces for heterogeneous thinking, for creative, critical, contested connections, and thus for potentially liberating work are being relentlessly foreclosed. Indeed, the very idea that we have the right to intellectual debate, collaborative inquiry and collective action within the university at times feels almost unthinkable. This is why it is important...

...Literature is an exploitation of the possibility that any utterance may be ‘non- serious’. It, and therefore all writing, is the reduction of an idea: a truth, the notion of serious linguistic usage, the ‘right way to think’, my ‘real’ intention. Yet such an idea may always only be a supposition, radically unverifiable, because the only sensible form it takes is its appearance in literature, in language as literary. All language is potent...

...er many hours. In pursuit, our minds were constantly strategising—reading tracks, or where there were none, engaging in ‘speculative hunting', developing the capacities of visualisation, projection, empathy and abstract thinking. This raises the question: are we at our physical and mental best in an environment where busy roads form the main arteries of our cities and campuses, and the transport systems and technology surrounding us...